Have you ever had one of those nights where everything just went wrong? And the harder you tried to make it go right again, the more it went wrong? Yea, that was my raid night last night. Y’all I was so off my game, that I shit you not, I didn’t use swiftmend on the first two encounters we did. Just…didn’t use it at all. Yes, I am now wearing the cone of shame.

In the hopes that this post can work something like confessional and wipe away my sins, let’s start.

Forgive me Cenarius, for I have sinned.

I think to fully understand this story, we should start from the beginning. The Tuesday of doom. I don’t know why, but I was so anxious and overwhelmed on Tuesday that I could barely function. For whatever reason I apparently thought that patch 5.0.4 was the apocalypse. That all things would end and there would never, ever be WoW again. In honesty, I had the great add on update and having to redo my UI. It makes me frustrated and irritable. And I know I would have problems with one of my major add ons: Power Auras.

As it turned out, Power Auras was not the main problem. Grid was. Well, not specifically, it worked fine. But I couldn’t get my Rejuv to display in text as a timer. I had read I didn’t need extra modules for this any more, and for the life of me I couldn’t get it to work. I will touch more on this later, but for now, let’s just suffice it to say I was flustered. After more than an hour of trying to make it work, I gave up and figured I would just use the dot, and it would be fine. (Hint: it wasn’t).

After I gave up on Grid, I decided to tackle power auras. The new interface is…well, something different. I have been a loyal power auras user for sometime and was willing to give it a go. I made my first aura and then spent thirty minutes looking for how to give it a timer. I gave up, and gave in to the weak auras pressure. One of our moonkin walked me through making auras and helped me through the interface and I got all of my auras completed (can you guess which one I forgot? Yup…swiftmend). However, when I log out and back in all of my auras are gone.

I somehow get them back, make an export, and log for the night.

This Brings Us To Wednesday

I woke up early, and observe there is a new Grid update. So I download it, and log in. And I still can’t Rejuv to show as a timer. Frustrated, I it in a ticket over on wow ace…but rush through it a bit because I am now running late for work. And as a result, my ticket isn’t as complete or clear as I’d like it and I missed a question. When this is pointed out to my by the dev I feel like an idiot. I apologize, count the hours until I can get home, and rush home at the end of the day. I know that I have about forty five minutes from the time I get home until the time raid invites start.

I log in and take care of the rest of my ticket.

The next thing I do is go to fix a couple of the auras I did last night, only to find that they have all disappeared again. Frustrated, I delete weak auras completely. Removed the saved files from my WTF folder and do a clean reinstall of them and import my auras again. I make the handful of changes I want, log out, back in….and my auras are gone again. Trying not to just break down and sob, I take to twitter to find out what is going on. I learn it is a known bug. The auras are there, they just don’t show up. Ok, fine, whatever. I have five minutes to get to the zone at this point and I feel defeated.

The First Raid Post 5.0.4

Was a disaster for me. While I thought I would be fine with the basic grid DoT for my Rejuv, I learned I was sorely mistaken. After over three years of looking for one thing, completely changing it through me through a loop that shocked even me. This was just the start of a very bad night. But was likely the catalyst for one of the worst raids for me, personally, in memory.

Like a good little Druid, I tried to use mushrooms every fight. It turns out, that for the first two, I was so keyed up about the damn mushrooms (and grid) that I completely ignored one of my base heals -swiftmend and subsequently efflorescence. And my healing is indicative of that. I played poorly.

To make it worse, I went to the wrong spot on Zon’ozz. For nine months I’ve been going to the same spot on Zon’ozz, and last night I went to the wrong place. And as a result two people in my group died. We let a ball hit the wall, and I died coming down and didn’t get to heal the last 10% or so of the encounter. I am usually the top healer in this fight for our raid team and last night I was…fourth. Granted we were all very close, but this is not a place I’m accustomed to finding myself, and it only served to deepen the funk I was in.

I finally got my act (mostly?) together by the time we hit Yor’shaj, but I felt so off that the rest of the night was tainted. This was only exacerbated as I watched out disc priest dominate the raid with spirit shell. I couldn’t help feel envious at his cool new toy that was done more than 40% of his healing, while my concerted effort at using mushrooms resulted in a whopping 3-5% of my healing done…and were often to my detriment and I could have done more healing had I just ignored them.

I finished the raid extremely disheartened, and even more so after looking at the logs and seeing some of the glaring errors I had made. I felt a fool. Who was I to give anyone advice when I forgot to swiftmend, for Christ’s sake. I know it was only one night, I know people have off nights, but I’m not people, it doesn’t happen to me. Only apparently I am human. I do have off nights. And I make mistakes.

No matter how hard I try to shake it and tell myself I’ll do better next week my self perceived failures last night are going to be hard to shake. I’m too hard on myself, I know this. But it is who I am, and I’m going to have to dig deep down and pull myself back up. Somehow I’ve got to find the courage to use my struggles from last night as motivation for next week.

As I had my pity party for myself, I realized something.

Relearning to Heal Isn’t Fun

This is now the fourth time I’ve “relearned” to heal. The second time with massive mana changes. And you know what? It fucking sucks. I’m tired of trying to work small miracles with my toolkit, figuring it out, only to have it yanked out from under me and made to go through all the learning pains of learning your limits again.

Maybe I’m just outgrowing WoW after eight years. Maybe I’m that old, grizzled tree who is yelling for everyone to get off her lawn. I don’t know. I just know that I’m tired of the constant changes, not always for the best, after finding my groove.

Find My Way Out Of The Corner

I know, next week is a new week. I need to approach it like a blank piece of canvas waiting for me to paint a new story. And somehow I need to shake last night and put it behind me. Perhaps 10 save woodland creatures will do the trick and then my sins of last night will be cleansed :)

26 responses to “Small Things That Aren’t So Small”

So, ok, I do know how it feels to be very competitive, and feel like you are failing. However, one lighthearted way to look at this, which I realize may not help at all (and if not, I’m sorry), is that you finally gave others a chance to shine. You know, they probably feel that they can never beat you on the meters, and overall with the heals. So, by having a bad night, you gave yourself more of a challenge for next time, and you gave someone else a chance to be on top for once.
Also, personally, I think of these next couple of weeks as testing. I’m going to try to go through most of my talents/spells (including mushrooms, that I’m sure I’ll hate) that I find even slightly compelling, and switch them around and try them out. These next couple of weeks just don’t really count for me, in that I’m running WoL specifically to analyze what I’ve been given and make decisions based on my personal numbers and my personal playstyle. Once I’ve decided what feels right, and what works for keeping the raid team alive, then I’ll turn on my competitive side, but right now, I’m taking this opportunity for testing and decision making. I know, you said you hate being moved out of your groove, but here we are, for better or worse.
And, I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that new glyph for charming a creature to follow us around – WIN!

While I know you are right….I feel obligated to toss in some ill conceived saying like “second place is the first loser” ;)

I jest…mostly.

I was just so off and uncomfortable. I imagine it felt much like one of those little girls who fell off the balance beam while trying for a gold. Or Kayla Marooney, who even while falling flat n her ass was still only .02 from a gold medal. (man…I should probably give up while I’m ahead with these sports analogies!).

“This is now the fourth time I’ve “relearned” to heal. The second time with massive mana changes. And you know what? It fucking sucks. I’m tired of trying to work small miracles with my toolkit, figuring it out, only to have it yanked out from under me and made to go through all the learning pains of learning your limits again.”

Maybe I’m off the mark, but I don’t think that’s the case in this situation. I think your frustration is more due to the fact you’re trying to relearn healing *while severely handicapped.*

I mean, it’s like if you were an excellent free throw shooter in basketball, and then they decided to move the line. Maybe it’s back, maybe it’s forward, maybe it’s to the side, maybe it’s diagonal, doesn’t matter. But you have to relearn the sweet spot…while only using one hand, closing one eye, and balancing on one foot. Yeah, that would really suck.

Worse, it would feel like a completely artificial difficulty, because you know you shouldn’t have to put up with these idiotic restrictions. Similarly, when you’re dealing with an unfamiliar UI (and very stressed out about it too due to various bugs), it’s going to make everything seem so much worse.

But I think that within a week your UI will be functional again and trying out healing will be a lot less frustrating than it is right now.

It is most likely a combination of not having my usual tools and trying something new. I did get Grid squared away and ran a second raid on one of my alt Druids, with a friend’s guild, and fared much, much better. Which, subsequently, helped my confidence a ton as well.

Oddly, I find your post extremely heartening. I’ve been keeping up with changes, and spent my time on the beta, but the patch hit this week and my reaction was “NO! I don’t wanna!”. I have some major outside stresses right now, same as you, and right now, today, all the changes are overwhelming and terrible. It is a relief to know that I’m not alone. The people who didn’t do their homework don’t count. ;)

Glad i am not the only one feeling like crap in the Resto Druid healing department. I havent even tried the shroomies yet either. But cheer up or if it frustrate you too much take a break from the resto druid. Don’t let it ruin your game life.

My biggest frustration since the patch is that mushrooms are even worse than I thought they would be. With diminishing returns each was healing for less than 2k when they hit the whole raid. Yuck. Of the fights I did (I sat out for Zon’ozz, Hagara and Ultrax), Blackhorn was the only fight where I found them remotely useful. It turned out that getting them down as I ran to an Onslaught and popping them right after it hit wasnt too bad. But still, one good use in 5 fights? Bleh.

I didn’t really think that healing felt any different on Tuesday, aside from the fact that the 35% nerf made it feel like there was nothing to heal.

I’m sure healing will feel much better for you once your UI issues are solved. I would have been lost if VuhDo was broken.

You know, I did another raid last night, and completely ignored the mushrooms, and I did so much better. Perhaps they will not be so terrible at level 90, but right now they aren’t worth the set up time and mana, and I tried. I really did!

I guess I’ve got to switch from Power auras as well, since I spent a fair amount of time on Tuesday trying to get a harmony indicator (and failing). Care to share your weak aura export ? I’ve got to switch, and that would save me some learning time.

Count me as another person who can’t get Power Auras to work. I’ve been trying out addons all day to replace it but Mage Nuggest and Tellmewhen have both failed so far. Weak Auras is next on my list.

I’m going to ignore mushrooms tonight. Not even gonna try unless I am seriously, remarkably bored. I know I can do the job with the toolkit I have, I hear the mushrooms are weak right now and I’ve got other things to worry about like mana (I reforged, regemmed and bought the spirit trinket today). As a final blow to mushrooms I have new toys that are actually fun so I’m looking forward to playing with them.

I agree with re-learning everything all the time though. Many of the changes were positive, a few were terrible but overall there are just so many!

I wouldn’t mind the changes so much…if it wasn’t every expansion. It is as if each time you get it figured out, it’s time to change it all again. And that is what frustrates me so much – regardless of if they are for the better or not.

I did do a second raid, where I opted to ignore the shroom, and felt both more comfortable as well as performed better.

Hello Beru! I have been reading your blogs for sometime now. I admire you very much. I just wanted to say the changes aren’t as bad as they seem. I come from a 10 man guild and we two healed everything on heroic; yes even spine. I ran with about 2300 spirit and the Heroic Heart of The Unliving. I didn’t seem to have much mana issues. You have said it yourself, the way we heal is largely the same, you just have to be a bit more conservative with your mana. Just try not to over think it! :) Also Lifebloom was my second heal on many fights from using TOL with the new 15 second duration, even first for a few (It was usually 4th prepatch). Do you have any thoughts on this? It seems like with the pressure of the patch things seem worse than they really are. Yes, I will say the shrooms are terrible, the range is smaller than I ever could have imagined and the 5k “heal”, doesn’t touch health pools. Although, I did manage to find a place to utilize them in every fight (even though it was useless!). Unfortunately, it looks like we are stuck with them for MOP, we will just have to make the best out of our current tool kit! We did it in Cata, we can do it again!

Have a look at TellMeWhen instead PowerAuras. It works smooth, is easy to configure and if you like to have actual spell and buff icons you can make several good icon groups to track uptime (Incarnation: Tree, Harmony, Nature’s Grace) and cooldowns (Innervate, Tranq etc.)

Raidframes were a pain in the first night, I used sRaidFrames as they allow me spell icons and timer on the frames. I found an addon that does the same on the standard Blizz UI, and you can freely scale the icon/text size: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/blizzard-raid-frame-indicators
Awesome for tracking hots, but you will have to configure all the important boss fight debuffs yourself – which is a little minus.

A lot of us are in the same boat in regards to the changes with Power Auras. Aaaaand judging on the post it’s author made on it’s Curse page this morning, we’re not in for a quick fix by any means. :(

In regards to what you were able to make work in Weak Auras last night.. Would you be willing to share the export strings if and when you get a chance? I spent some time this morning poking at it to no avail. Your shared strings might help some of us also get back on track.

Wow… you’re lucky over there, getting Tuesday night to play with things before getting home on Wednesday night to raid. Here in Aussie land we only ever have that hour before the raid on Wednesday to get things sorted (except for the people that don’t work, I guess). I didn’t have time to even think about power auras or weak auras pre raid. I updated all addons, figured out which ones were going to work and which weren’t, selected talents and glyphs and that was pretty much all I had time for. I didn’t play great, but then I didn’t expect to, and half of the rest of the raid didn’t either. Maybe next week will be better.

I know exactly how you felt. I was stressing myself about mana before the patch hit. My main is a disc priest and she was going from over 170k mana raid buffed to 100k. And she was loosing a lot of her mana regen. Rapture now doesn’t even cover the cost of the PW:S when before it gave me a nett gain of over 5k, every 12-20 sec. I was losing the mana regen from archangel & then like most other healers, my mana regen abilities from my high mana pool (shadowfiend & hymn of hope). So I was getting myself a little stressed.
Then there was the broken addons, don’t we all love patches. It was very odd not having my power auras to tell me when my spells were off CD. I kept trying to hit penance & it wasn’t quite off CD yet!! But we got through it.

I then had a chance to heal on my druid, in a 10 man DS run. I had only leveled her a couple of months ago when I realised we could glyph into being a treant again. (I love the treant).
I had only healed a couple of DS runs so I didn’t know how much she had changed, so I wasn’t stressed going into the run. But man did I have fun. I could run around & heal (love the hots) with my treant arms flapping away happily :)

I used the mushrooms, I found in places in Zonozz, after the ball was heading back the other way, when we were healed, I could put down the mushrooms & as soon as the ball hit my group again, bloom those shrooms. It didn’t heal the 5 of us up completely, but worked quite well with a swiftmend or lifebloom. I also used them when we were moving to the next eye tentacle, I would use lifebloom & as I was running to the next standpoint, I could put my shrooms down for an isntant heal when we all got there.
I found esp on madness I would lay them down before the blistering tentacles & the heamorrhage came out, when there was a lull, so I could use them along with the usual heals. But, as I said, I haven’t played this toon much at all, and don’t know how useful the mushrooms would be.

I’m glad you had a better run for you next run.

Thanks so much for your posts. I’ve referenced you blog for a guide for the resto druids in my guild. Your videos on how you healed the encounters have helped :) Now, I’m happy to be using them for my druid :)

Beru, I feel your pain. I think every healer has had these nights where nothing seems to go right. The number 1 thing you need to realize is that everyone was having an off night. Ya, it’s awesome your Disc Priest’s new shiny toy was doing wonders. And yes our healing mushrooms blow chunks. I did Heroic Ragnaros yesterday with my guild and I used Mushrooms for the seed explosions as a quick way to heal everyone up (also used Swiftmend and Wild Growth). I did TWO Healing Touch + Nature’s Swiftness heals and they nearly eclipsed my Mushrooms in total healing. Needless to say, Blizzard will EVENTUALLY notice that Resto Druids will just stop using the spell altogether and finally fix them or get rid of them.

Shoot, I got off topic. The fact is, you are like me, in that you use quite a few add-ons. I know both of us will probably say we don’t, but in reality, we do. But we also have a very clean and succinct UI compared to most. And with that, comes major issues on patch days. My two biggest forms of advice are this; if an add-on is giving your crap, scrap it. You healed just fine without any of your add-ons in beta. If any of them are truly not helping you due to them being broken, then don’t use them. I know this seems like blasphemy, but in all honesty, it’s better to go in with mediocre settings than to go in with something brokn.

The other piece of advice, and I don’t know how you feel about this, is when testing out new add-ons or settings or even testing out not using one, hop into a BG. This will give you some practice with healing large numbers of people without it being completely faceroll (LFR) and having things come at you unexpectedly in an ever shifting environment.

Anyways, that’s just my two copper on the matter. Everyone is their own worst critic. And at the end of the night, you guys still cleared your raid. Whether you kill everything without a single death or there is only one person standing, a win is a win. And since you’ve already noticed your errors from the first week, you aren’t going to repeat them this week! Good luck tonight and please do a post for us so we know how everything went!

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If you intend to use anything on this website, please have the courtesy to attribute what you share, and offer links back to this site. If you are unsure if you can use the content found here, please do not hesitate to contact me directly. ~Beru